PHOENIX — It took a lot longer than usual, but Kevin Durant made his return to Phoenix with four games left in the regular season and spoke for the first time in the Valley since he was traded to the Houston Rockets last June.
The Phoenix Suns host the Rockets on Tuesday in a nationally televised primetime showdown with plenty of storylines, thanks some to Durant missing Houston’s first game in Phoenix back in late November for a personal matter.
Durant has already spoken plenty on the trade, saying he felt “booted out of the building and scapegoated,” that it hurt him “because I put all my effort and love and care towards the Suns and the Phoenix area and Arizona in general.”
Those remarks were three months ago, and it appears time has helped heal the wound.
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“I’m pretty much over it,” he said at shootaround on Tuesday. “At the time, it was tough to take. A place I wanted to be and keep building but it’s the business of the league. … Yeah, I was sour early on but I think I’ve gotten over it.”
Any special feelings coming back to the arena?
“There’s not much sentimental value between me and this place,” Durant said. “It’s a great place to live, I definitely loved living here. But I was only here for a short amount of time.”
As is the case with just about everything Durant says to the media, whether you agree or disagree, it’s easy to understand what he means.
This was a rather forgetful stay. When he’s inducted into the Hall of Fame, there will be few highlights of Durant in a Suns jersey. And depending on what he accomplishes in Houston, it could wind up being the least relevant time he spent with one of five organizations.
Phoenix won one playoff series, and it was the year he arrived midseason. Its regular season record when Durant played was 85-60, a mirage of a number when it’s all said and done based on what it resulted in and the lacking quality of play it often produced. Ditto for Durant’s impressive individual production.
While he took a few seconds to ponder on the question, it was not surprising to hear him say he didn’t take many lessons from the two-plus years, given everything he had seen and done prior to arriving.
“There’s nothing really big or significant,” Durant said. “I wasn’t here long enough to really feel like I left a mark here. And that’s unfortunate because I want to leave marks everywhere I go. But it is what it is, you move on and appreciate the time spent.”
The crowd reaction on Tuesday will be interesting.
Durant had his fervent supporters, who were just as vocal as his critics. Again, he’s got a point with feeling scapegoated. He and Bradley Beal are 1A and 1B for most fans when pointing the finger at why the last few years went so poorly. Now, he does deserve blame. But his feeling as the primary target still there.
After shootaround, Durant acknowledged he always felt the love from Suns fans when playing for the franchise, and in the past was always complimentary of Phoenix as a basketball city.
But expect him to get booed a whole lot.
For a Suns team looking lethargic as hell lately, the event will at least inject some intensity into their play. It will be Jalen Green’s first time facing Houston since he was traded, while Dillon Brooks was definitely doing even more than he normally does in the prior matchups.
Durant, as you’d expect, will embrace it. He hit the game-winner in his second time facing the Suns in Houston, motioning toward Phoenix to exit the premises.
Green said at Suns shootaround he will approach it like any other game. We’ll see if he, like Durant and Brooks, gets into the extra-circulars of it all.
The Rockets come into Tuesday 49-29, jostling for a seed in the Western Conference between third and sixth. They’ve got a shot of at least matching last year’s win total of 52, but for a squad on paper that had the ceiling to be the second-best team in the West, they have never come close to looking the part for a few months now.
This was a moment in the season many expected for them to be in the conversation for the biggest threat to take down Oklahoma City. Instead, chances of a conference finals appearance seem slim.
That’s because it has been a, well, weird season for Houston. Certain issues have percolated throughout the year that feel familiar.
But before getting to those, the Rockets were dealt a significant injury blow before the season began when starting point guard Fred VanVleet tore his ACL. That jumbled up the initiation and organization of the offense, and then halfway through the year, center Steven Adams had season-ending ankle surgery. Adams was leading the efforts on a historic offensive rebounding rate that was lifting a mediocre offense into a great one. Without him, the rebounding is still pretty great but the offense dropped from fourth pre-Adams injury to 14th.
That has certainly been a contributing factor in the Rockets not remaining consistent to the culture and identity head coach Ime Udoka built up through his, for lack of a better phrase, hard-ass attitude.
You also wonder what else is contributing to that.
Udoka has had a number of press conferences this year calling out his team’s engagement, and that has not done the trick. Young building blocks Amen Thompson and Alperen Sengun are having career years statistically but look more out of sorts than they did last year within the flow of the team. There are listless performances aplenty from a team previously known for its toughness and moxie.
There was the thought of Durant being able to approach this like Golden State, where an established foundation of how they play and are coached would allow him to ingratiate himself much easier in ways that Brooklyn and Phoenix did not allow for. But it has looked far more like those two situations that looked more uncomfortable.
The primary benefit of the Durant addition was to take the pressure off Sengun and Thompson offensively and carry the weight of a brutal offense in clutch time. Last season, Houston was 26-18 in clutch games with a -0.9 net rating. This year, it is worse, 21-22 with a -9.2 net rating.
A watch reveals some of the problems Phoenix dealt with. Houston’s offensive structure is often loose, unable to stick to a concrete plan and at times immensely struggling to do the most basic things. Getting Durant the ball can occasionally be a chore, and all of this really comes to a head when the game is on the line.
The on-off numbers still speak to Durant’s impact. A 5.5 net rating when Durant is on the floor drops to 2.7 when he takes a seat, the second-lowest mark amongst Rockets regulars.
Durant has still been Durant from a production standpoint, something easy to breeze by before remembering he’s 37 years old. Durant’s 25.9 points per game are his lowest in almost a decade, but only by a few hairs. The bonkers efficiency of 51.9% from the field, 41% at 3-point range and 87.7% for free throws remains as consistent as ever.
It would be remiss to not at least mention the viral speculation online about a supposed social media burner account from Durant, with the account having several messages leaked in private group chats that spoke lowly of current and former teammates/organizations. The story that broke prior to the All-Star Game was never confirmed, but Durant took an extended break from posting and the private account was following a few Suns social media personalities. Regardless of whether it was really him or not, you can imagine how the speculation of its legitimacy would create problems in the locker room.
When looking at the trade from Houston’s perspective, the thought was a win-win situation at the expense of just about nothing. It got rid of two larger salaries in Brooks and Green that it wasn’t going to be prioritizing ahead of Sengun, Thompson and Tari Eason, while the No. 10 overall pick had a low shot of establishing a rotation role by the end of next year given how deep Houston was. If it didn’t work out, the Rockets would still have Sengun and Thompson entering their mid-20s by the time Durant’s contract expired.
The playoffs will ultimately tell the story. Houston’s performance in the first round last year bordered on embarrassing with how inept its offense was, falling to the seventh-seeded Warriors. Durant was brought in to solve that.
The Rockets could luck out and draw a Los Angeles Lakers group currently without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. They could also face two large threats in the Denver Nuggets or Minnesota Timberwolves. Beating either, or a healthier Lakers unit, would confirm Durant has guided Houston toward some progress. And if you’re the type to entertain a concept Durant often mocks, it would go a long way in reaffirming his legacy.
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